The Temptation of Desperate Men
by The Carnivorous Muffin
Summary: In which, in an act of desperation, Madara chooses an apprentice much sooner than he expected before Konoha can become more absurd and more dangerous. Unfortunately, he chooses the first one he finds, which happens to be the overpowered and socially oblivious Eru Lee. Side fic to "Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds"


**A small note that this is a side fic to "Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds" which in turn is a spin off of "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus". Without some familiarity with both of these fics you'll just be confused. Another note that this is NOT CANON to either of those fics, as is probably obvious upon reading.**

* * *

"Oh, Madara, like epic battle with shodaime Senju Hashirama which made a giant valley Madara?"

"Yes."

"Like founding father of Konoha who then left the village and tried to destroy the village with a giant fox Madara?"

"Again, yes."

The girl blinked, peered at him closer, and then said in a casual and completely unperturbed tone, "Oh, alright."

She sat cross legged in front of him, seemingly unconcerned that she, a girl who could hardly be older than twelve and a Konoha nin, was sitting in front of the man who had attempted and nearly succeeded in destroying her village years ago and had been assumed dead for longer than she had been alive.

Of course, she had appeared out of nothingness in a place she had no business being able to reach, so perhaps he should be the one that was concerned.

However, thus far she had offered no sign of aggression, had not even made to reach for any sort of weapon. Her hitaei was new, shining, she was small, her hair was thick long and vibrant which in someone older might show prowess and pride but at her age merely showed stupidity (the first thing a ninja did was go for the hair), everything about her from her small delicate hands, her large green eyes, seemed to convince him that she was not a threat.

"I do have one question though." She said before leaning forward with a bright and curious spark in her eyes (and wasn't it strange how she met his without flinching, as if she didn't know what the sharingan was and what it meant), "Why the giant fox? I feel like there are just easier ways to destroy a village than a giant fox and also it just seems so _Godzilla_ like to me, not that there's anything wrong with _Godzilla_ destroying Tokyo, it's certainly intimidating. Just… slow, and plus it didn't work anyway so there's also that."

There were many answers to that question, each as painful as the last, and so he went with the answer that seemed most efficient while also being honest enough to possibly satisfy the girl, "It was the only solution."

The girl however, apparently was not satisfied by that, "Really, that was the only solution?"

"Yes."

She seemed dissatisfied but didn't ask further, rather continued to sit there, eyeing him and as she continued to sit there Madara thought about what he had to do. Kill her. If she went back to Konoha, if they discovered he was alive, if she brought someone here who wasn't a child then everything would be finished and his plans ruined. Of course, they might not believe her, she was young, and more judging by this conversation alone she was odd.

Who would believe that a child had found Madara alive in a cave?

But then, it wasn't really worth taking the chance, was it? He had slaughtered hundreds for this one plan of peace and one more little girl wasn't even worth batting an eyelid over. Still, it was best to find out how she had arrived, and if there was some new technique developed by Konoha that had somehow slipped his attention.

"Why are you here?" He finally asked and the girl simply shrugged.

"Testing kekki genkei."

"Testing kekki genkei?"

"Orochimaru, Konoha's chief mad scientist, said he wants to see if I can get anywhere without knowing where I'm going or what I'm looking for. So I teleported without really thinking of going anywhere and I wound up in your creepy bachelor cave." The girl explained, as if this was all perfectly commonplace and he should be more than willing to accept her explanation.

"What is your kekki genkei?" Because appearing out of nothing like that sounded like kamui, which was only possible with the sharingan, but this girl clearly was not an Uchicha.

"Manipulating the fabric of all space and time to reflect my desires." She said shortly, again as if she was perfectly serious, "Not that Orochimaru is saying that, mind you, since that comes a little too close to becoming a god for his tastes but it's true."

And that was all he needed to know, without a second thought Madara was over towards the girl and before she could blink snapping her neck. He let her body drop to the floor of the cavern, her unseeing eyes locked on the statue, and prepared himself to summon Zetsu to remove the body.

Until he found himself slammed brutally against the wall, out of the corner of his eye he watched as the girl stood, eyes glowing and no sign of her prior ease or cheerfulness in her expression.

No, these weren't the eyes of a little girl, they were the eyes of a bijuu ancient, proud, and terrible.

For a moment she simply stared at him, the air seeming to stagnate, the shadows stretching, and then without a word she was gone disappeared from whence she came.

And with alarm he realized that would be Konoha and that he might already be too late, "Zetsu!"

* * *

"Well?" Orochimaru asked, casually cleaning his silver instruments of the Lee clones' blood, not seeming to mind that his lab was filled with the dismembered bodies of Eru Lee.

It usually didn't bother Lee either, that's what the clones were for, but after her recent cave experience she felt a little more personally connected to her suicidal clones than she normally did.

"Well, I wound up in this creepy cave with these evil plant things and a very creepy looking statue. I also met Madara, you know the guy who tried to go all _Mothera_ on Konoha back in the day… It also turns out I can't die and that I'm probably the Shinigami. Is that a kekki genkei?"

Orochimaru said nothing, merely pursed his lips, continuing to polish his instruments which usually for him meant that he wasn't pleased and wasn't going to take her word for it. Which was fine, because Orochimaru and her had their own thing without her pulling the actual kami card on him.

"Right, so, I'm gonna go find Minato, you want more clones to kill off in horrific and gruesome ways?" She said, sticking her hands in her pocket and eyeing the doorway interest, because Minato was much better for this sort of thing than Orochimaru.

"Of course." Orochimaru said, as if it should be obvious that he wanted to spend his afternoon doing… something to her clones.

With that five new Eru Lee clones appeared each saying simultaneously, "I'm Eru Lee and I like being tortured, drained of chakra, and then cut into tiny pieces by Konoha's mad scientist Orochimaru!"

Orochimaru merely raised an eyebrow and said, "I would greatly appreciate it if you found a way to make them stop doing that."

But Lee was already on her way out the door, off to find Minato, and tell him about a dark eyed man in a train station who had said that she was the death of a universe. But how did you put such things, the shadows that were his clothing, the green that was his eyes (her eyes), how did you put things like that in words?

(In the end, Lee wouldn't remember or bother to think about Madara until sometime later.)

* * *

Planning and replanning, it seemed as if they didn't know so perhaps the girl hadn't reported him (or she had not been believed). The White Zetsu clones didn't report a change in Konoha, no desperate search for Madara, no tension in the air.

Although it seemed that Konoha was changing every time he turned his back and things he had taken for granted, such as the death of Hashirama, Hashirama who he had seen die who had killed him, had been turned on its head.

So much of his plan had changed in the past few months alone because there were no certainties anymore. If Hashirama caught wind of him then Madara was not in any condition to win that fight, not against the shodaime who was apparently in his prime, Madara was old and dying and already it seemed as if he would not live long enough to see the Eye of the Moon plan come to fruition.

The longer he waited the more things changed, the less he could assume, the more dangerous this all became.

If this kept up, if Madara didn't hurry or find some other solution, then he would fail.

He had slaughtered too many and had sacrificed far too much to fail now. He had passed the point of no return too many years ago to count.

He needed an apprentice, someone to carry on his work, someone who could use that boy with the rinnegan, Nagato in Ame, and bring Madara back to life at the final moment.

He had always needed one but before there was time, time to train them, to explain the plan and why it was necessary why Konoha was nothing but a foolish pipe dream for those too weak to see the true and only solution. Konoha was the dream of a man who had believed men were capable of rising above bitterness and death; it was fitting that this man had been murdered just as all of the rest of them were.

He needed one who was powerful already, one who was desperate and bitter already, someone who was ready to believe but simply needed a slight push in the right direction.

With that thought his heartbeat slowed, he willed the alive (alive and real and not like this wasted empty Hashirama he had created himself) out of his mind, and settled back against the statue to think further on the apprentice he needed to obtain.

* * *

It was Minato who suggested she look back into the whole Madara thing. She mostly thought he said it as a distraction, give her something to do and puzzle about besides figuring out what she was supposed to be.

She didn't really think it would bother her, not being human, and in a way it didn't because she'd always been slightly off from the rest of them. It wasn't exactly a surprise which was why she'd taken the man who'd lived in the train station at his word.

And Minato had taken it well enough, he had taken it very seriously, but nothing appeared to change. Because if she was a kami then she had always been a kami, if she was the reincarnated Sage of the Six Paths then she had always been him in the form of a little girl, what you are didn't matter because you would always be it.

But that was Minato and Minato had always been special; there was only one Minato.

So when she'd finally gotten to talking about Madara in a cave Minato had said she might want to check again, see if she hadn't somehow found herself in a genjutsu. Like the whole thing, her in the cave, the man in the train station, had all been some bizarre dream.

It hadn't felt like a genjutsu though, not even like the one already over reality, this was a place as real as any other place in a fake world and the train station had somehow seemed realer than that. But Minato, as always, had a point.

"If Madara is there then you'll have to tell the hokage and the shodaime." Minato said, because if Madara was somehow alive then things had become pretty serious, even though Madara hadn't looked like he was in any condition to go declaring war on anyone.

So Lee teleported back to the cave and found the creepy homeless man right where she left him, attached to a black terrifying looking statue in a small dark cavern. And at the sight of her he was standing, with a lot of speed for his age, and staring at her in that intent manner he'd had right before he'd snapped her neck.

Her eyes however drifted to the statue, that was maybe the real reason she'd come back, there was something about that statue that felt… Not familiar but unnatural, something she should remember and something that oozed, something she didn't like. But she didn't recognize it, knew she hadn't seen it before, and maybe that was the reality that wasn't reality getting to her again but all the same her eyes drifted to it.

"You've returned." The man said, pulling her attention back to him.

"I forgot to mention that killing people is considered quite rude." She said, observing him as he observed her.

She wondered if he was going to try killing her again, that thought was uncomfortable, even though she appeared immune to it she still didn't like the idea of being dead. She could probably beat him, now that she knew he was fast and ruthless enough to snap her neck, but she still didn't like it.

Then he relaxed suddenly, as if some switch in his mind had been turned and some decision reached, the tension dripped from him and when he looked at her he was smiling. It was a smile that tried to be soft and real but failed immensely and just came off as off-kilter.

"Tell me, girl, do you like Konoha?"

What an odd question, one she didn't necessarily know the answer to. Konoha was better than Little Whinging, given a choice between the two (and she had in a way) she would easily choose Konoha over Surrey. That being said she wasn't of the opinion that places were things you could like or dislike. Konoha was interesting, if a tad bit violent, and was filled with more or less interesting people. Konoha had Minato, had Jiraiya, had Orochimaru, had the shodaime the nidaime, and even the sandaime. But there were others in Konoha besides this, inconsequential beings whose existence neither pleased nor displeased her, and Konoha had its quirks that were more aggravating than they were charming. A place like Konoha was far too multifaceted to like or dislike.

"It's a place." This apparently, for once, was the correct answer because his smile became a grin.

"Let me tell you then, about the truth of Konoha."

And thus Lee entered into the weirdest (and longest) conversation she'd ever have in her life about giant chakra monsters, the moon, and world peace.

* * *

"So, Madara is alive, and he's also crazy. He lives in a cave with his plant friends, one of which I'm pretty sure is his love slave copy of Senju Hashirama, which is just weird and creepy, and he keeps living by sucking the life juice from this evil mystical statue…" Lee trailed off because the hokage trio seemed to be having processing that as it was, Hashirama seemed a bit stunned by it, either because of the Madara being alive part or because Madara had made a love slave mindless plant version of him.

"Anyway, so he has this two-step plan that he tried to get me to sign up for where step one is finding all the giant chakra monsters and putting them into a statue and step two is creating a giant genjutsu (over the already existing genjutsu) by pointing it at the moon… This equals world peace."

They still seemed to be having trouble processing it which was understandable as it had been a very in depth talk when Madara had given it, one that had lasted so long that she'd actually had to replace herself with a clone and just have it radio in the speech to her (strangely enough he hadn't noticed the difference even when it proclaimed "I'm Eru Lee and I like listening to Uchicha Madara's terrible plan for world domination and general crazy talk in his bat cave").

She was giving the short and sweet version, the one that also removed the laments about human nature and Konoha, so there were a lot of details missing that might have been important to their understanding.

When the silence stretched on too long Lee finished merely by stating, "I just thought you should know."

* * *

This was not how he pictured meeting Hashirama again. He had expected to see him within Infinite Tsukeyomi and in there the strains in their relationship (the bitterness between Senju and Uchicha) would have disappeared and Izuna would be alive.

But the world had turned on its head recently and the girl, that thrice damned girl who he realized he needed but had failed to be convincing and had failed to keep her trapped until she realized the true worthlessness of humanity, had returned with Hashirama hand in hand with her.

And he looked, he looked exactly as he had all those years ago, young and vibrant and so full of life and hope.

What a fool he'd always been.

"Oh, Madara, what have you done to yourself?"

"Do not pity me, Senju!" Madara said because he had not come so far as to need pity from Hashirama of all people, "You should have stayed rotting in your grave."

But Hashirama was looking at him, not with that stupid goddamn smile he favored or a look of betrayal and anger as he had during their last fight, but instead with grief as if Madara was already dead and lost.

"I said don't pity me!"

He would have to kill him, both of them, it was too late for Konoha clearly they knew that he had returned and he would have to plan again. Rewrite all of his goddamn plans all over again but that would be later and now he had to send Hashirama back to his grave.

"What else am I supposed to feel, Madara? You threw everything away, our friendship, our dream, our village, for this." Hashirama motioned to the cavern, to Madara, as if that said more than he ever could.

Because they would not listen, they would not listen when he told them that it would not work, and it hadn't surely Hashirama had seen that for himself. Konoha was not the thing they thought it could be, it was a cesspool of corruption and greed, run from the shadows by men who didn't believe in mercy or compassion. Hashirama had been weak and had failed to follow through; he had always been too soft.

He would have to end this, catch Hashirama off guard while he still had the chance, destroy him until there wasn't even a shade of chakra that they could call back from the pure world. He took a breath, preparing himself, and he watched as Hashirama mournfully did the same (preparing to end what they had started so many years ago.)

Then the girl spoke, the girl who Madara had almost completely forgotten existed, she had moved to the statue staring at it with those unnatural demon's green eyes, "There are easier ways to save the world and to destroy it."

Then with a single hand she tapped against the statue and then, the only way he could describe it was that the cavern began to twsit, the walls changing position while remaining in the same position, the colors growing saturated then inverting on themselves, everything twisting and turning and finally stopping.

And when it did stop there was only rubble where a statue had been and a satisfied smile on the girl's face, "That thing was really getting to me."

She then turned to Madara and said, almost dully, as if this was something he should have learned years ago and he had been too stupid to pick up on it, "Next time, don't use ancient evil artifacts to do your own dirty work for you."

And all will to fight him left, because there had only ever been one statue, and without it there was no possibility of a world without war and death.

* * *

 **Author's Note: Written for the 100th review of "Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds" by MerhppDerhpp who asked for a fic where Lee, in all her socially awkward overpowered glory makes an appearance in Madara's bat cave. So here we are, a short look into Madara's life rapidly falling to pieces.**

 **Thanks to readers, you are excellent, feel free to review as well to be more excellent.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or Harry Potter, obviously**


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